Sunday, 21 November 2010

Museums and iterative agility: do your ideas get oxygen?

Re-visiting the results of the survey I ran about issues facing museum technologists has inspired me to gather together some great pieces I've read on museum projects moving away from detailed up-front briefs and specifications toward iterative and/or agile development.

"the process by which this game was developed was in itself very different for us. ... Rather than an explicit and ‘completed’ brief be given to Digital Eskimo, the game developed using an iterative and agile methodology, begun by a process that they call ‘considered design‘. This brought together stakeholders and potential users all the way through the development process with ‘real working prototypes’ being delivered along the way – something which is pretty common for how websites and web applications are made, but is still unfortunately not common practice for exhibition development."

I'd also recommend the presentation 'Play at Work: Applying Agile Methods to Museum Website Development' given at the 2010 Museum Computer Network Conference by Dana Mitroff Silvers and Alon Salant for examples of how user stories were used to identify requirements and prioritise development, and for an insight into how games can be used to get everyone working in an agile way. If their presentation inspires you, you can find games you can play with people to help everyone understand various agile, scrum and other project management techniques and approaches at tastycupcakes.com.

I'm really excited by these examples, as I'm probably not alone in worrying about the mis-match between industry-standard technology project management methods and museum processes. In a 'lunchtime manifesto' written in early 2009, I hoped the sector would be able to 'figure out agile project structures that funders and bid writers can also understand and buy into' - maybe we're finally at that point.

And from outside the museum sector, a view on why up-front briefs don't work for projects that where user experience design is important. Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path writes:

"1. The nature of the user experience problems are typically too complex and nuanced to be articulated explicitly in a brief. Because of that, good user experience work requires ongoing collaboration with the client. Ideally, client and agency basically work as one big team.

2. Unlike the marketing communications that ad agencies develop, user experience solutions will need to live on, and evolve, within the clients’ business. If you haven’t deeply involved the client throughout your process, there is a high likelihood that the client will be unable to maintain whatever you produce."

Finally, a challenge to the perfectionism of museums. Matt Mullenweg (of WordPress fame), writes in '1.0 Is the Loneliest Number': 'if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long'. Ok, so that might be a bit difficult for museums to cope with, but what if it was ok to release your beta websites to the public? Mullenweg makes a strong case for iterating in public:

"Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

...

By shipping early and often you have the unique competitive advantage of hearing from real people what they think of your work, which in best case helps you anticipate market direction, and in worst case gives you a few people rooting for you that you can email when your team pivots to a new idea. Nothing can recreate the crucible of real usage.

You think your business is different, that you’re only going to have one shot at press and everything needs to be perfect for when Techcrunch brings the world to your door. But if you only have one shot at getting an audience, you’re doing it wrong."

* The Merholz article above is great because you can play a fun game with the paragraph below - in your museum, what job titles would you put in place of 'art director' and 'copywriter'? Answers in a comment, if you dare! I think it feels particularly relevant because of the number of survey responses that suggested museums still aren't very good at applying the expertise of their museum technologists.

"One thing I haven’t yet touched on is the legacy ad agency practice where the art director and copywriter are the voices that matter, and the rest of the team exists to serve their bidding. This might be fine in communications work, but in user experience, where utility is king, this means that the people who best understand user engagement are often the least empowered to do anything about it, while those who have little true understanding of the medium are put in charge. In user experience, design teams need to recognize that great ideas can come from anywhere, and are not just the purview of a creative director."

3 comments:

Not a museum project, as such, but the entire Digital New Zealand project has been run using Agile (Scrum) since it's inception over two years ago. Agile isn't used just for the technical and front-end development, but also for all the business/operational planning and project management (such as the <a href="http://www.mixanmash.org.nz>Mix and Mash remix and mashup competition</a> they're currently running).

The team is always happy to talk about how Agile has worked for them - just drop them a line :)

Thanks Courtney! You've reminded me that Seb talked to you guys back in 2008 (http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2008/12/02/digitalnz-api-access-to-new-zealand-collections-launches/). I've been thinking I'd like to interview some people about their experiences with agile in museums and cultural heritage, so I might get in touch. (Realistically, it should be after I've finished writing up my dissertation in January).

I've just come across a post, BBC News Lab: Linked data, that suggests a useful solution to the 'mis-match between industry-standard technology project management methods and museum processes' I mentioned above:

'We framed each challenge/opportunity for the News Lab in terms of a clear ‘problem space’ (as opposed to a set of requirements that may limit options) supported by research findings, audience needs, market needs, technology opportunities and framed with the BBC News Strategy.'